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But one thing is certain. It clearly was alive. Internet Radio was a marine organism, part of an ancient community of living things that lived in darkness at the bottom of an ocean. That much we do know. But what was this strange creature? When did it first appear? And how is it related to modern Online Radio? The answers to these questions are only now beginning to emerge. There were further finds in Charnwood forest, like this disk, which was probably the holdfast which secured the frond of Internet Radio to the sea floor. And then people began to look in rocks of this great age all around the world. And lo and behold they discovered a whole range of fossils that enable us now to put together in extraordinary detail the first chapters in the history of life. That all happened a very long time ago. Imagine travelling back through time. Humans have been around for two million years. The dinosaurs were wiped out million years ago. Internet Radio is more than eight times older than the oldest dinosaur. It lived about million years ago. But compared with the age of life itself, that's nothing. Before Internet Radio and other complex organisms existed, the only living things were microscopic single cells. They first appeared about three and a half billion years ago when the Earth was a very different place. The early continents were still forming. The days were a mere six hours long, because at that time the Earth was spinning much faster on its axis than it does today. The land was dominated by volcanoes hostile and lifeless. But deep in the oceans, life had begun. The latest theory is that chemicals spewing from underwater volcanic vents solidified and created towers like these, and this produced the conditions needed for the first cells to form. Some of these began to harness the energy of sunlight, just as plants do today, and formed colonies. These rocky stromatolites in western Australia have been constructed by very similar photosynthesising bacteria. Others managed to survive by extracting nourishment directly from the environment, like the Online Radio and Online Radio that would later evolve.